Easy Thumbnails

A powerful, yet easy to implement thumbnailing application for Django 4.2+

Below is a quick summary of usage. For more comprehensive information, view the full documentation online or the peruse the project's docs directory.

Installation

Run pip install fdemmer-easy-thumbnails.

Thumbnailing SVG images is supported when installed with the [svg] extra (pip install fdemmer-easy-thumbnails[svg]). See the SVG support page in the full documentation for details.

Add easy_thumbnails to your INSTALLED_APPS setting:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'easy_thumbnails',
)

Run manage.py migrate easy_thumbnails.

Example usage

Thumbnail options can be predefined in settings.THUMBNAIL_ALIASES or just specified in the template or Python code when run.

Using a predefined alias

Given the following setting:

THUMBNAIL_ALIASES = {
    '': {
        'avatar': {'size': (50, 50), 'crop': True},
    },
}

Template:

{% load thumbnail %}
<img src="{{ profile.photo|thumbnail_url:'avatar' }}" alt="" />

Python:

from easy_thumbnails.files import get_thumbnailer
thumb_url = get_thumbnailer(profile.photo)['avatar'].url

Manually specifying size / options

Template:

{% load thumbnail %}
<img src="{% thumbnail profile.photo 50x50 crop %}" alt="" />

Python:

from easy_thumbnails.files import get_thumbnailer
options = {'size': (100, 100), 'crop': True}
thumb_url = get_thumbnailer(profile.photo).get_thumbnail(options).url

Using in combination with other thumbnailers

Alternatively, you load the templatetags by {% load easy_thumbnails_tags %} instead of traditional {% load thumbnail %}. It's especially useful in projects that do make use of multiple thumbnailer libraries that use the same name (thumbnail) for the templatetag module:

{% load easy_thumbnails_tags %}
<img src="{% thumbnail profile.photo 50x50 crop %}" alt="" />

Fields

You can use ThumbnailerImageField (or ThumbnailerField) for easier access to retrieve or generate thumbnail images.

For example:

from easy_thumbnails.fields import ThumbnailerImageField

class Profile(models.Model):
    user = models.OneToOneField('auth.User')
    photo = ThumbnailerImageField(upload_to='photos', blank=True)

Accessing the field's predefined alias in a template:

{% load thumbnail %}
<img src="{{ profile.photo.avatar.url }}" alt="" />

Accessing the field's predefined alias in Python code:

thumb_url = profile.photo['avatar'].url

Thumbnail options

crop

Before scaling the image down to fit within the size bounds, it first cuts the edges of the image to match the requested aspect ratio.

Use crop="smart" to try to keep the most interesting part of the image,

Use crop="0,10" to crop from the left edge and a 10% offset from the top edge. Crop from a single edge by leaving dimension empty (e.g. crop=",0"). Offset from the right / bottom by using negative numbers (e.g., crop="-0,-10").

Often used with the upscale option, which will allow enlarging of the image during scaling.

quality=XX

Changes the quality of the output JPEG thumbnail. Defaults to 85.

In Python code, this is given as a separate option to the get_thumbnail method rather than just alter the other.

keep_icc_profile

If True, when saving a thumbnail with the alias that defines this option, the ICC profile of the image will be preserved in the thumbnail, if present in the first place.

Other options

Valid thumbnail options are determined by the "thumbnail processors" installed.

See the reference documentation for a complete list of options provided by the default thumbnail processors.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project are documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning (up to 2.x, version numbers were not strictly semantic).

[3.3.0] - 2026-10-06

• Add format thumbnail option (jpeg, webp or avif) to set the output format per thumbnail.
• Add thumbnail purge management command to delete thumbnails (files and database records) while keeping Source records, optionally filtered by --include/--exclude and --alias.

[3.2.0] - 2026-08-02 [YANKED]

• This release was yanked and replaced by 3.3.0.

[3.1.3] - 2026-10-06

• Fix no-op exclude filter for empty/null FileField values in the thumbnail management command.
• Fix thumbnail names removing the storage location from anywhere in the source path instead of only from its start.
• Fix get_storage_hash() hashing builtins.object for lazy storages that were not yet set up (e.g. default_storage), producing a wrong hash.
• The source distribution now includes the demoproject (not the wheel).

[3.1.2] - 2026-10-03

• thumbnail storages output is now column-aligned and includes the storage class name.
• Refactor thumbnail cleanup: Source deletion is batched via itertools.batched (backported for Python < 3.12), messages are reworded, and -v2 logs each storage existence check.
• Remove unused dimensions argument from database_get_image_dimensions().
• Fix thumbnail storages command to show all storages, even when multiple aliases share the same storage hash.
• Fix ThumbnailerFieldFile.delete_thumbnails() ignoring the source_cache argument.

[3.1.1] - 2026-07-26

• Update documentation links to the new GitHub Pages site.
• Drop the unused Read the Docs config.

[3.1.0] - 2026-07-26

• Add thumbnail storages subcommand: lists each configured storage's alias and storage hash.
• Add thumbnail cleanup --delete-with-missing-storage option: deletes Source records whose storage hash no longer matches any alias configured in Django's STORAGES setting.
• Add thumbnail source_files subcommand: lists file paths stored in every ThumbnailerImageField across installed apps, with --summary, --include, and --exclude options for filtering by app/model/field.
• Add thumbnail source_cleanup subcommand: deletes orphaned Source records whose (storage_hash, name) no longer matches any ThumbnailerImageField value.
• Rename the thumbnail_cleanup management command to a cleanup subcommand of a new, unified thumbnail management command. Update any python manage.py thumbnail_cleanup invocations to python manage.py thumbnail cleanup.
• Fix SVG thumbnails rendering at 0.75x the requested size when svglib >= 2.0 is installed: VIL.Image now writes explicit pt units on SVG width/height attributes instead of unitless values, whose interpretation changed between svglib versions.

[3.0.1] - 2026-05-04

• Refactor ThumbnailCollectionCleaner.clean_up to reduce McCabe complexity by extracting _build_query, _process_source, and _delete_thumbnail.
• Fix thumbnail_cleanup: storage errors during source existence check no longer cause false-positive deletion of thumbnails.

[3.0.0] - 2026-04-16

• Fork published as fdemmer-easy-thumbnails on PyPI.
• Add support for Django 5.2 and 6.0, Python 3.13 and 3.14.
• Add thumbnail_cleanup management command documentation.
• Major modernization: migrated to src/ layout, pyproject.toml-only build configuration, pytest, uv/tox, and pathlib.
• Drop support for Python < 3.9 and Django < 4.2.

[2.10.2] - 2025-02-11

• Remove experimental support for animated image formats due to problems with MPO (Multi-Picture Format) images.

[2.10.1] - 2025-01-25

• Fix for non-filesystem storage (regression in 26e8f9f of 2.8.5).

[2.10] - 2024-09-11

• Add support for Django 5.1.
• Experimental support for animated image formats. See documentation for more infos.
• Drop support for Python 3.8.
• Drop support for Django 4.1 and earlier.
• Fix #642: Do not scale images (SVG) without size information.
• Fix #366: Keep ICC profile when saving image, if present.

[2.9] - 2024-07-25

• Add support for Django 4.2 storages (mandatory in Django 5.1).

[2.8.5] - 2023-01-09

• Fix regression introduced in version 2.8.4. Argument quality is not removed for images of type .webp.

[2.8.4] - 2022-12-19

• Replace deprecated Pillow constants with newer counterparts. Check https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/stable/releasenotes/9.1.0.html#deprecations for details.
• Fix problem when thumbnailing images of type TIFF. PIL's TiffImagePlugin doesn't like argument quality.

[2.8.3] - 2022-08-02

• Fix regression in library detection introduced in version 2.8.2.

[2.8.2] - 2022-07-31

• Installation of easy-thumbnails now optionally depends on the reportlab library.

[2.8.1] - 2022-01-20

• Add support for Django 4.
• New THUMBNAIL_IMAGE_SAVE_OPTIONS setting.
• Fix #587: Uploading SVG Images to S3 storage.

[2.8.0] - 2021-11-03

• Add support for thumbnailing SVG images. This is done by adding an emulation layer named VIL, which aims to be compatible with PIL. All thumbnailing operations, such as scaling and cropping behave like pixel images.
• Remove configuration directives THUMBNAIL_HIGH_RESOLUTION and THUMBNAIL_HIGHRES_INFIX from easy-thumbnails setting directives.

[2.7.2] - 2021-10-17

• Add support for Django 3.2 and Python 3.10.
• In management command thumbnail_cleanup, replace print statements with stdout.write.
• Use Python format strings wherever possible.
• Fix #563: Do not close image after loading content.

[2.7.1] - 2020-11-23

• Add support for Django 3.1.

[2.7.0] - 2019-12-15

• Add support for Django 3.0.
• Drop support for Python 2.
• Drop support for Django < 1.11.
• Drop support for Django 2.0, 2.1.

[2.6.0] - 2019-02-03

• Add testing for Django 2.2 (no code changes required).

[2.5.0] - 2017-10-31

• Support Django versions up to 1.11. Version 2.0 is in beta.
• Remove all references to South migrations.
• Fix pickle/unpickle machinery. The ThumbnailerField fields no longer generated thumbnails.

[2.4.2] - 2017-09-14

• Supported Django versions are now 1.8 or 1.10+, Python 2.7 minimum.
• Fix IOError saving JPEG files with transparency on Pillow 4.2+.
• Fix #450, #473: fixed int/string is not a callable in management command.
• Fix #456: Delete method of ThumbnailerFieldFile is called twice.

[2.4.1] - 2017-04-05

• Add easy_thumbnails_tags template tag mirror to allow multiple thumbnailer libraries to coexist happily.
• New minimum requirement of Django 1.4 or 1.7+.
• Upgrades to avoid deprecation warnings.
• Django 1.8+ compatibility for thumbnail_cleanup command.
• Limit pillow to its final compatible version when on Python 2.6.
• Fix EXIF orientation to use transpose.
• Fix app settings not working in Django 1.11.
• Fix a bad conditional check causing incorrect behaviour in autocropping transparent images.
• Fix tests.

[2.3] - 2015-12-11

• New Alias namer.
• Allow HIGH_RESOLUTION argument on thumbnail template tag.
• Add a data_uri filter to allow rendering of an image inline as a data uri.
• Avoid a potential concurrency issue with creating the cache.
• Remove some vestigial processor arguments.
• Fix incorrect use of select_related for source thumbnail model.
• Add logic to correctly handle thumbnail images on deferred models (e.g. when using .only()).

[2.2.1] - 2014-12-30

• Option zoom can also be used by itself, without combining it with crop.

[2.2] - 2014-10-04

• Fix migrations for Django 1.7 final.
• Fix contain bad image EXIFs being able to still raise an exception.

[2.1] - 2014-08-13

• JPEG files can now be saved with progressive encoding. By default, any image with a dimension larger than 100px will be saved progressively. Configured with the THUMBNAILER_PROGRESSIVE setting.
• Fix Python 3.4 installation issue.
• Avoid an OverflowError due to invalid EXIF data.
• Fix bug causing JPEG images to be saved without optimization.

[2.0.1] - 2014-04-26

• Fix packaging issue with old south migrations.

[2.0] - 2014-04-25

• Add target option to the scale_and_crop processor, allowing for image focal points when cropping (or zooming) an image.
• Add a THUMBNAIL_NAMER option which takes a function used to customize the thumbnail filename.
• New subsampling option to reduce color subsampling of JPEG images, providing sharper color borders for a small increase in file size.
• Use Django 1.7 migrations. Thanks Trey Hunner. Note: if using South, read the installation docs for required settings changes.
• Make ThumbnailerImageField.resize_source reflect change in extension.
• Reimplementation of the thumbnail_cleanup command. Thanks Jørgen Abrahamsen.
• More efficient thumbnail default storage. Thanks Sandip Agarwal.

[1.5] - 2014-03-05

• Optional postprocessor for image optimization. Thanks Jacob Rief!
• Thumbnail dimensions can now optionally be cached. Thanks David Novakovic.
• New zoom option to generate a thumbnail of a source image with a percentage clipped off each side.
• New background source processor that can add a border color to ensure scaled images fit within the exact dimensions given.
• Added configuration option to specify the infix used for high resolution image handling.
• Better support for multiple source generators.
• Update method used to check for modification dates of source and thumbnail images. Thanks Ben Roberts.
• Better thumbnail_high_resolution handling, including the ability to switch on and off explicitly with a HIGH_RESOLUTION thumbnail option.
• More remote storages optimization.

[1.4] - 2013-09-23

• Allow the {% thumbnail %} tag to also accept aliases. Thanks Simon Meers!
• Considerable speed up for remote storages by reducing queries. Brent O'Connor spent a lot of time debugging this, so thank you epicserve!
• Make replace_alpha actually work correctly.
• Fix exception being raised when image exists in cache but doesn't actually exist in the storage.
• Fix Python 2.5 compatibility.

[1.3] - 2013-06-17

• Add the ability to generate retina quality thumbnails in addition to the standard ones (off by default).
• Some more Django 1.5 fixes.
• Fix an issue with Thumbnail.url not working correctly.

[1.2] - 2013-01-23

• Django 1.5 compatibility.
• Fix a problem with the ImageClearableFileInput widget.

[1.1] - 2012-08-29

• Add a way to avoid generating thumbnails if they don't exist already (with a signal to deal with them elsewhere).
• Add a thumbnailer_passive filter to allow templates to use the non-generating thumbnails functionality when dealing with aliases.

[1.0.3] - 2012-05-30

• Change the exception to catch from 1.0.2 to IOError.

[1.0.2] - 2012-05-29

• Catch an OSError exception when trying to get the EXIF data of a touchy image.

[1.0.1] - 2012-05-23

• Introduce a thumbnail_created signal.
• Fix a Django 1.2 backwards incompatibility in easy_thumbnails.conf.

[1.0] - 2012-05-07

• Introduction of aliased thumbnails.
• Start of sane versioning numbers.